Magic Woman Manifesto

To whoever may be listening.

For those who have been following the project for some time now, you’ll be aware that I live beneath the surface of my work. I am camera shy. I much prefer imaginative worlds to reality. I have learned to exist in public and to play a character. I have learned to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. I developed my character George Maple as a safe space to express the suppression of my primal desires and vulnerabilities. As I’ve matured, I’ve become more aware of the relationship between pen and paper. I spend hours of my day finding bridges between the gaps, in a rabbit hole of amateur academia; from the power of neuroplasticity and biological desire to an exploration of Mayan pyramids to the sublime and the hero’s journey.

I sat down this morning to write the ‘brief manifesto’ for Magic Woman, a sound-bite to be released on Instagram. I realised it would not suffice this time around. There was too much to say, too much to unpack. There are too many threads unravelling as I violently rip apart the original tapestry I sewed together. So I decided to put my thoughts on paper candidly in case anyone was interested.

At an immediate and visceral level, this song was born from the co-dependency of love, sadness and rage. A few years ago now, towards the end of a dying relationship, the person I loved expressed his disappointment with ‘the person I had become’ and the anger and negativity I was expressing on a daily basis. At the time, I was suppressing the truth of my own trauma. My experiences were no different to many; a general subjected experience as a woman, the death of a loved one, failure, broken relationships, dealing with a broken entertainment industry. My own struggles with these external forces as well as my own perfectionism and control manifesting in many forms, from abuse of alcohol, emotional outbursts to eating disorders. I felt victim to my environment. I felt victim to a system that criticized the way I want to live my life, run my business, create my art. I felt powerless. Which of course, amplified the pain and made everything worse. One day, during a deep and meaningful back and forth, my lover asked me sadly ‘where the girl who gave me the meditation book’ had disappeared to? Where was the girl who made him feel calm, secure and loved? The ‘girl he fell in love with’. The girl who idealised art and lived in her imagination. This conversation was a valuable turning point.

I knew this relationship would never survive because the love was based on one dimension. My reaction was knee jerk and I knew this person described was not the person I wanted to be. Those parts of myself still existed but were evolving. I realised I was fighting these new powers that had been gifted to me… The trials and tribulations, the anger, the fire, the passion, the drive… I was suppressing rather than embracing, as it did not fit with who I was expected to be and the role I was expected to play. By rejecting these parts of myself I was in fact hurting others around me. When I look back, I was deepening, finding my voice, making mistakes, failing and getting back up again, struggling and slowly touching on the truth I had been hiding from.

This single conversation was the birth of Magic Woman. I did not realise at the time, but this was the beginning of something spectacular. I never quite understand why the words seem to flow in a particular order. It is only in retrospect that I find the connection between consciousness and subconsciousness. Before I wrote this upcoming LP, I wrote the synopsis of a film. I have developed an obsession with Sci-Fi and A.I… I am beginning to understand now, this obsession was a direct reflection of my desperation to unpack and free myself from perfectionism and robotic expectations. To release myself from not only my experiences within a sociological framework, but from the invisible power structures around me.

In 2019, we are facing a slow burning apocalypse, a rupture in our most fundamental relationship. Our relationship with mother earth. We treat mother nature as a ‘resource’, as an expendable commodity. We dehumanise her, capitalise off her and her role is to serve however she provides the core of our existence, our food, water, land… quite literally she is the basis of human life. I feel the dynamic in so many human relationships is so closely intertwined to the one we have with mother nature. We expect her to provide for us however we are reluctant to give back. We have disrespected her for decades and caused her pain. Her pain manifests in violent outbursts, destruction, anger (global warming, natural disasters, fires, sea changes) but we always have the opportunity to do better… to change, to understand… to evolve.

This additional layer in the songs meaning was the primary inspiration behind the visual concept.

I guess the purpose of this long winded manifesto is to share my own experiences and ideas in the hope that perhaps it will inspire curiosity and a desire to look beneath the surface. In these most recent times, I have decided this project will be a home for freedom of artistic integrity and expression. It’s a space for community, imagination and freedom of expression. I love the idea that once these words have left my mind and transcended on the paper in front of you, your voice takes over. How you choose to read and interpret the scenes in front of you are out of my control and open for interpretation. All I hope is this long winded series of words will inspire curiosity and look for the connectivity.

I believe we all live in the confines of invisible architecture. A matrix built to help us make decisions and to make decisions for us. I believe humans rely upon an archive of narratives to make sense of the world. The more voices that are able to speak, the richer the tapestry becomes. The more I journey down this road, the less I know and the less I understand. I’m realising the best we can do is try and build compassion and empathy. I used to feel caught in a paradox between opposing forces; reality and fiction, art and commerce, ying and yang, light and dark, masculine and feminine. I used to feel as though I had to decide to be one or the other and to have one single identity. This song is about learning to respect the balance and the interconnectivity of all things. The fluctuation of being.